Excerpt:There seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old
boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests,
nuns and laity in places like Sudan.

The Vatican certainly supports many charitable
efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s
at the grass roots that I findthe great soul of the Catholic Church.

It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to
sniff derisively at a church whose apexis male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of
touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS. But what about Father Michael Barton,
a Catholic priest from Indianapolis?

I met Father Michael in the remote village of
Nyamlell, 150 miles from any paved road here in southern Sudan. He runs four schools for children
who would otherwise go without an education, and his graduates score at the top of statewide
examinations.

Father Michael came to southern Sudan in 1978
and chatters fluently in Dinka and other local languages. To keep his schools alive, he
persevered through civil war, imprisonment and beatings, and a smorgasbord of disease. “It’s
very normal to have malaria,” he said. “Intestinal parasites — that’s just normal.”

Father Michael may be the worst-dressed priest
I’ve ever seen — and the noblest.Anybody scorn him? Anybody think he’s a self-righteous
hypocrite?

On the contrary, he would make a great pope.

Just a reminder that there are Catholics who aren't
in on "the activities."

I wonder why they don't speak out against the rapes more forcefully?
Are the good Catholics the sheepy, we-don't-want-no-trouble Democrats?